One With the Night (13 page)

Kilkenny looked at his nails as though they needed paring. “Th’ place is just too much fer Miss Blundell alone, though she does no’ like ta own it, and now they ha’ several guests.”

Jane blushed. She was about to protest, but a glare from Kilkenny kept her silent. Mrs. Dulnan chewed her lip and studied him. “It’s a fair walk,” she murmured.

“The doctor could leave a cart in the village.” Now he was volunteering their only gig? That left her only her mare for transportation. How would she haul supplies up to the farm?

The woman nodded. “In that case … I’ll take ye on meself.” Her eyes gleamed with tears.

Jane groaned inwardly. “People are … afraid of Muir Farm. If you’d rather not…”

“Ignorance,” Mrs. Dulnan said briskly, blinking. “Men ha’ been comin’ up recent ta give blood, and none ha’ died yet.” She peered up at Jane. “Unlike some others I could name, I dinnae think birthin’ that baby when it was like ta die were against God’s will.”

Ahh. Mrs. Dulnan must not like the women who had spoken against Jane for delivering Evie’s boy. She’d help at Muir Farm just to spite them. Well, Jane couldn’t gracefully refuse, under the circumstances. She smiled and held out her hand. “Thank you so much. Would tomorrow be convenient?”

“Tomorrow be fine.” Mrs. Dulnan shook Jane’s hand. “I’ll send a boy up fer th’ cart.” She glanced to Kilkenny, who was just getting up from the table. He towered over her. “And ye, lad, dinnae be careless with my Lachlan’s plaids. Now I’ll be there ta brush ’em fer ye.”

Kilkenny bowed. “I’ll be honored ta wear them.” Still he made no move to pay her.

“I expect th’ place is in a state,” Mrs. Dulnan remarked.

“It’s probably not what an expert housewife could do,” Jane said, only to be courteous.

Kilkenny gathered up the clothes. Jane reached again to her reticule, staring pointedly at him. “We’ve imposed on Mrs. Dulnan long enough,” he muttered, and pushed Jane in the direction of the door. Mrs. Dulnan led her into the tiny yard. He trailed them to the gate and tied the clothes into a bundle he fastened behind Faust’s saddle. Jane mounted her mare, Missy, by herself while he was busy, just to avoid having to put her boot in his cupped hands. She had managed to avoid his touch so far tonight. Mrs. Dulnan disappeared inside. Kilkenny glanced over and frowned.

“I can’t believe you didn’t pay for her son’s clothes,” she accused.

“And shame her for settin’ a price on his memory? I dinnae think sa.”

Jane sighed. “I suppose I now employ a housekeeper I don’t need at the cost of a cart I do need in order to provide for her without making her feel like she was accepting charity.”

He didn’t disagree. “But ye do need her.” They moved off into the night.

“I do just fine,” Jane muttered as the village disappeared behind into the darkness.

He said nothing. Maddening man! How could one argue with him? Very unsatisfying. And distracting. She couldn’t help but watch him. She had to pull her thoughts away from the muscle she knew moved under the shoulders of his coat. Mrs. Dulnan would no doubt make a racket about the house while Jane wanted to sleep and disturb her father at his work. That is, if she didn’t find out that the house was full of vampires and run screaming into the village. They’d probably end up being burned out by an angry mob. Painful surely, if it didn’t kill them.

Of course, if the woman just cleaned and perhaps washed clothes and Kilkenny took care of the animals, she’d have time again for her painting. And now she had to make time to traipse all over the countryside looking for plants for her father’s experiments. Perhaps it wasn’t such a bad solution after all, if the woman would keep to herself.

She’d never tell Kilkenny that, of course. Off to their right, the waters of Loch Ness seemed to heave and sway. Missy let out a worried whinny. “What was that?” Jane asked.

“I dinnae know…” Kilkenny muttered as he struggled for control of Faust. Jane turned to look, but the water was smooth and still again. Clouds were coming up from the west. They passed in front of the waxing moon, and the landscape darkened. The horses quieted as they started up the road away from the loch.

The silence stretched. They wound up into the hills on a track hardly more than two ruts. The horses’ hooves thudded softly in the loam. A stream, not quite a river, chattered to their left. The darkness felt … intimate. She had never been afraid of the night. In fact, the night had always been almost comforting. But now, its seductive undercurrent felt menacing.

She cleared her throat. “You must be looking forward to wearing kilts again.”

“I’m a Lowlander,” he said, an edge to his voice. “Ye English might not ha’ noticed, but kilts are Highland dress.”

“King George himself wore the kilt when he came to Edinburgh two years ago. They’re a symbol of the Scots now.”

“Dictated by th’ English.”

“The clan leaders all wore them,” she protested.

He snorted. “Nae doubt descendants of th’ same lairds who voted away their country.”

His growling intensity was disturbing. But here at least was something with which she could argue. “I don’t see Scots clamoring for freedom.”

“Nae, ye dinnae see that.” His voice was flat. Oh, dear, she had touched another nerve.

She had a thought. “Did
you
speak out against the Union?” An Irishman more patriotic than the Scots he lived among? How interesting

“Aye,” he said grimly. “More than a hundred years after th’ Treaty, and fifty after Culloden. I wrote foolish drivel nae one wanted ta hear.”

“Why did you write it, then?”

“Genetic, probably, from m’ father.” His lips sneered. “Fourth son o’ an impoverished Irish earl who moved to Scotland and wrote political tracts. Nothin’ quite sa useless, is there?”

But she didn’t care about his father. She wanted to know what he had believed in and why he no longer believed it. “Not good enough. Why did you write against the Union?”

He spared her a glance. His lips were a thin line and she thought he wouldn’t speak. But finally he said, “Maybe I was tired o’ the English lookin’ down on us.”

“Really?” she asked, surprised. “The English are positively infatuated with Scotland.”

“No’ for what it is. They ha’ an idea o’ Scotland—sublime beauty but primitive people.” He snorted derisively. “We’re no’ primitive. And sublime beauty?” He shook his head in disgust. “Th’ land is poor and cold and hard. Lord, th’ way they talk of heather, like it was soft instead o’ just a bramble!”

She had to laugh, as much for his torrent of words as for the words themselves. He looked at her in surprise. “I agree with you there. How someone who lived in England could think such a hard land beautiful, I don’t know. It’s all just propaganda put about by the Scots themselves. My friend Miss Sithington always talked about Scotland as though it were right out of a novel by Sir Walter Scott.”

“Mr. Scott has much ta answer for,” he agreed. There was that gleam in his eyes again. “But no’ sa much as Bobbie Burns.” Were those crinkles around his eyes all he had left of a smile? She had never seen him straight-out smile. He sobered. “It’s a hard life th’ people ha’.”

He was proud of them, though they were an adopted people. She cocked her head. “Scots have contributed far more to science and philosophy than the country’s size warrants. And there is, of course, the brave performance of the Scottish regiments at Waterloo. That certainly endeared you to the English.”

“Aye,” he said. “If there’s one thing a Scot knows, it’s how ta die fightin’ against odds. But I canno’ say I’m a Scot.”

Ahh. He was proud of them, but he didn’t count himself one of them. “Of course you can. Scots were Picts and Celts and Vikings and Normans and Irish. Why, the area first called Scotia was inhabited by settlers from Ireland. And Ireland is also Celt and Viking and Norman. Not much difference, when you come down to it.”

He glanced over at her, glowering. “Then how is it Scots seem ta hate th’ Irish sa much?”

Here was the point of all this. He had grown up living with prejudice, an outsider. He still felt it. Only now it was magnified by his condition. She shrugged. “Well, now, I can’t imagine why people who are the same might take an irrational dislike to each other. That’s never happened before. But let’s see … how about territorial disputes, old grudges, or the ever-popular doctrinal disagreements inside the same religion? Would those do?”

He set his lips. He didn’t like to be mocked, did he? Still, his eyes did gleam.

“You wouldn’t happen to be Catholic, would you?” she asked sweetly.

“No’ sa ye’d notice.”

That meant he was, or had been once. He pulled up. The track petered out into a path as the hills steepened. They would have to walk from here. She pulled her cloak up and brought her knee over the pommel of the sidesaddle so she could slide to the ground. She unhooked the basket she had brought for the mushrooms, and tied Missy to the bole of a larch tree in range of some sweet green grass. “You think the Scots are an oppressed people?” she asked.

“Poor people are always oppressed.” He tied Faust to a birch and started up the path.

“And women,” she said. “That’s general, too.”

“Women? I dinnae think sa.”

“Of course they are,” she said hotly. “A woman is sold into marriage. All she has passes to her husband’s control. He can beat her or rape her, take mistresses. She has no rights. If we give our bodies elsewhere we are called sluts. Have you noticed there is no derogative word like that for men who bed multiple women?”

There was a long moment of silence as they climbed around a boulder. He reached back to hand her up. His touch roused that feeling that always seemed to lurk inside her these days. Was there no respite from it? He felt it, too, because he pressed his lips together and frowned. She thrust herself into the breach. “And often our bodies are the only living we can make. We trade them for marriage, or if we can’t, then for money.”

He looked grim. “I’ll give ye that. But women parade themselves in their finest ta catch a husband.” She couldn’t argue with that. “They seem ta me like spiders in a web, waiting for th’ unwary fly.”

She had to smile, in spite of the shadow she saw pass behind his eyes. “Do we really? I hadn’t thought of it like that. And you men are the poor unwary flies?” She considered. “I think we adorn ourselves because it is the only power we have.” She sighed. “It does seem vain.”

“Ye dinnae indulge that vanity.”

If he only knew how she longed to indulge it. She was jealous of Miss Zaroff with all her perfectly matched, expensive clothes. But no one knew that. “I’m not looking for a husband,” she said with asperity. Or did it rankle that he thought she dressed plainly? “You must admit that the power to please is a small kind of power.”

“Some women ha’ more power than is good for th’ world. There are those that are stronger than men. And if one
is
stronger…” He took a ragged breath. “Then she takes revenge fer all th’ crimes o’ strength against her sex.”

A woman who was stronger? “Oh. You mean like an aristocrat who has social leverage over her servants or a queen over her subjects?”

“Somethin’ like that.” His voice, drifting back, sounded defeated.

Or maybe women like Miss Zaroff. She would be stronger than human men even in a physical sense. Jane decided, however, that she didn’t want to talk about Miss Zaroff. She wouldn’t think why. “I … I don’t disagree with you,” she said. He glanced back at her in surprise. “I’ve felt that anger against men. But men can be just as bad to other men.”

A pause. Was he considering? “Aye.”

“That’s just the way of the world. Powerful against powerless. I wish it wasn’t.”

She thought he had decided not to respond but after a moment he continued. “Sometimes ye can balance out th’ scales a little.” He sounded so tentative.

But this was fascinating! She took three breaths so it wouldn’t look like she was pouncing on his words. “You mean you take the side of the powerless?”

“Dinnae make it sound like Robin Hood.” She heard the snort over the noise of the falls. “Whatever I am, I am no’ English, and no’ a hero.” Again he paused. “But if ye’re strong or rich or ha’ a skill … there’s an obligation ta go with that.” He chuffed a derisive laugh. “Comes ta nothin’ in th’ end, any road. Ye clean out a nest o’ vipers, and a new viper moves in.”

“So what do you do?”

“Frighten the bullies. Give th’ weak some leverage in return. With women it’s usually money. They only sell their bodies because they dinnae ha’ anythin’ else. Ye’re right about that.”

He gave prostitutes enough money to leave the trade? “Sounds like a good tactic.”

“Nae. They’ll be back at it.” A silence. She let it stretch. “There was one named Alice. She might make it out.” His voice drifted back, wistful, through the darkness.

“I hope she does.” She had pressed him enough. She dared no more. So she lightened her tone. “Perhaps the hardest part is that we women are not allowed to use our brains.”

“Oh, sa ye ha’ brains? I never knew.” He had his voice under control now. It betrayed nothing. She was about to be outraged when she realized he was joking her. This was a first.

“You may scoff, sir. But it is very hard to be hedged round and kept from being what you can be. I want to be useful. But even my father lets me help only in menial ways. I hand him instruments. I clean the laboratory.” She felt the old pain rising. “I could be a doctor—I know I could. But women aren’t allowed to study medicine. So I must be content to be a midwife and learn what I can of anatomy by watching him.”

He glanced back to her and then away. “I was no’ scoffing. I only meant it’s daft ta think all men dinnae want their women ta ha’ a brain in their heads.”

“As daft as thinking all women are spiders trying to trap men and eat them?”

He hesitated. “Point taken.” He was practically shouting to be heard above the noise of the falls now, which had been growing louder with each step. Well, at least he wasn’t the kind who couldn’t admit being wrong. That raised him in her estimation. She found herself wanting very much to know what Mr. Kilkenny would say next.